Fitzgerald’s Use of Color in the Great Gatsby

2583 WordsMay 15th, 201211 Pages

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, exposes the corruption and greed of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald is able to captivate readers' attentions through his employment of color symbolism. Fitzgerald portrays important messages in the novel by his symbolic use of colors. Colors play an important role in Fitzgerald’s descriptions of the lives of Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway and many of the other characters in the novel. Fitzgerald uses the colors white, yellow, and green to express certain sentiments to the reader, commenting what is going on in the story. Fitzgerald uses the color white to symbolize purity and innocence, while yellow is used to symbolize moral decay, and death. Green is used to represent hope and…show more content…

While Gatsby attempts to hide his dishonesty, Nick, considers himself “one of the few honest people that I have ever known” (Fitzgerald, 59) and Fitzgerald often describes him as wearing white. The first time he attends one of Gatsby's infamous parties, he wears a white flannel suit. Nick is aware of the importance of this event, being formally invited to one of Gatsby's parties, and wants to project the right image. His white suit emulates honesty and the appearance of being untainted. Similar to white projecting honesty and purity, Fitzgerald also uses it to symbolize perfection. Daisy, always in white, was perfect in Gatsby's eyes. He lived his life around her, in order to reclaim her. Just as Daisy's whiteness symbolized perfection to Gatsby, the white world of the upper class was the epitome of perfection for Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress. To Myrtle, the perfect life would be to live like Daisy, to be wealthy. Although she lives in the valley of ashes as the wife of a garage owner, she feels she belongs with the upper class. She stakes claim in high society through Tom, but will never be fully able to gain access to their elite world. Fitzgerald shows her attempt to become “white” through her clothing. When she is first seen in the novel, she is wearing “a spotted dress of dark blue” (Fitzgerald, 25).

The Power of Color Colors are used many different ways by many different people, but are
used mainly as a reflection of the way one feels or his or her own personality. This idea is depicted through the different characters created in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, set in the post-World War I era. The novel evinces the major themes through the use and explanation of many diverse colors. Jay Gatsby, the most significant character in the story, leads a very materialistic lifestyle. Hoping…

Fitzgerald creatively utilizes colors throughout his novel, The Great Gatsby, not only to provide the reader with a rich visual image of the scene taking place, but also to convey certain symbols within the story. To begin with, one must understand what each color symbolizes. Green symbolizes hope, blue symbolizes illusion, red means violence or love, yellow illustrates wealth or death, white is innocence, and gray or black symbolizes corruption. The reader can see that color symbolism is used to characterize…

In the novel The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses tone, diction, syntax and imagery to voice Nick's perception of the world around him. In this passage his use of language is used repetitively to convey Jordan Baker, Daisy and Tom Buchanan's lives. On the outside it may look like they all are living a perfect and ideal life, however Fitzgerald's illuminating use of language highlights how far from perfect their lives truly are.
When he first walks in Nick judges Tom and Daisy's lives based on the appearance…

Fitzgerald’s use of symbolism and colors in The Great Gatsby is prominent in every chapter of his novel. To fully understand the meaning of his color use, a reader must recognize the situations in which these colors are used. Throughout the novel Fitzgerald uses the color green. Green has many possible interpretations, and its’ use to reveal insight into Gatsby’s character is probably the most meaningful.
One possible meaning of the color green is envy. Gatsby can be seen as an envious…

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby, exposes the corruption and greed of the Roaring Twenties. Fitzgerald is able to captivate readers' attentions through his employment of color symbolism. Fitzgerald portrays important messages in the novel by his symbolic use of colors. Colors play an important role in Fitzgerald’s descriptions of the lives of Jay Gatsby, Nick Carraway and many of the other characters in the novel. Fitzgerald uses the colors white, yellow, and green to express…

There are several things that authors can use for the setting of their poet or stories, and a false representation could be considered as a good setting in the story. Actually, F. Scott Fitzgerald had used a false representation really good in The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s false representation is probably the most effective device used in The Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby is an artificially set world by Fitzgerald. However, there is another artificial world within the novel that is created…

Discuss Fitzgerald’s use of symbols within The Great Gatsby.
Throughout his novel ‘The Great Gatsby’, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses
symbolism.
Symbols are objects, characters, figures or colours used to represent
abstract ideas or concepts.
The first symbol we see appears at the end of Chapter one. It is a
green light, situated at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s East Egg dock and
is only just visible from Gatsby’s expansive West Egg back garden. In
Chapter one Nick (the narrator) describes his…

When an artist paints a picture, they use vibrant greens and reds and contrast with dull blues and purples. In literature, the same technique can be used. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work, The Great Gatsby, he gives greater meaning to his characters and their experiences by using color imagery. The Great Gatsby, set in 1920s New York, shows the differences between the life of the prosperous and the impoverished. Fitzgerald uses the colors gold, yellow, green, and white to expand the meaning and purpose…

The Great Gatsby has been around for ages; it is a story of a young man in the 1920’s who is thrown into a new world made up of the new and the old rich. He is confused by the way these people act and in the end cannot stay another minute in this strange, insensitive, materialistic world. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald uses many techniques to help the reader understand how Nick Carraway (the narrator) is feeling throughout the story. In the book The Great Gatsby, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald uses…

20s. F. Scott Fitzgerald captured all three with his literary voice. He made impressions everywhere with the supreme achievement of his third novel, The Great Gatsby. This novel is a tale of people’s exciting lives in the 1920’s. Fitzgerald uses the Great Gatsby to illustrate the American identity during the early twentieth century. Fitzgerald uses symbolism and narrative techniques to illustrate the materialistic chase of the American dream by upper-class society in the 20's.
Before one can fully…